


Nothing Else Left to Impart

by orphan_account



Series: Atlus is a bunch of Cowerds who can fight me in a big bang burger parking lot [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Complex trauma, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Parent Death, Past Child Abuse, Trauma, naming unnamed characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 12:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19172944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Yusuke meets up with Nakanohara, more than half a year after Madarame's arrest, his complicated feelings about his former mentor and the mother he never knew receive an unexpected answer.





	Nothing Else Left to Impart

**1/20**

A cluster of bells tied to the door with a brightly colored ribbon when Kitagawa Yusuke entered the unfamiliar cafe. Like LeBlanc, this cafe was closely packed with tables and booths, but it was far better lit and mirrors on the walls and light colored furniture made it appear larger than it really was. Also it smelled different. Yusuke was relieved. This meeting would be hard enough without the foggy sense of loss he felt whenever he was reminded of Akira.

“You must know of some suitable cafes,” he had asked Haru the previous week as she leafed through a seed catalogue. “You can’t very well open your own without having done research.” And so, after Yusuke described the particulars of this meeting, Haru gave him the address of this cafe and western style bakery in Shinjuku. “It’s a bit expensive, but I’m sure you’ll both like it,” she had said.

Later, Yusuke found 3,000 yen in the pocket of the coat he’d been wearing. He half wished she wouldn’t do this, but he couldn’t honestly say he didn’t need the money.

Yusuke surveyed the cafe as best he could, but he didn’t see the familiar bowl cut or awkward lanky figure he was looking for. He checked his phone, and saw that he had arrived some minutes later than the agreed upon time. This was to be expected, considering that he’d walked two miles through Tokyo’s January slush to save money on his train pass. Despite being late himself, he felt a slight flush of annoyance, followed by a swelling guilt. How many times had Madarame cursed, blushing purple, at Yusuke or Nakanohara Senpai or Kanai senpai for making him wait? Something devious inside of Yusuke’s head asked. _Like master like student_.

As familiar as these waves of shame were by now, they still had power. They still made Yusuke want to cry out, as he often did with Haru or Futaba or Mr. Sakura. But here alone, in an unfamiliar place, Yusuke could only sink himself into a seat at the nearest table, and feed a page of his personal sketchbook to that oh-so-familiar loneliness he felt whenever thoughts of his former home drew near. In fact, he knew even as he began that what he was creating now had no artistic merit beyond the personal. Even so, he became quiet, completely absorbed in his work, grinding the pigment in his watercolor pencils deep into the page, sending orange, red, and magenta dust across the smooth white table, and ignoring the young waitress who came to ask what he wanted to drink.

Yusuke was about to ask for a glass of water—for blending his colors of course—when there came a thumping and a subsequent jingling from the door behind him. Of course it barely registered to Yusuke in its irrelevance; the waitress opened the door. It was the familiarity of the voice afterwards, saying “thank you very much” that truly caught Yusuke’s attention. He turned around to find the stooped, awkward, and entirely unremarkable figure of Nakanohara Natsuhiko, a good half hour late, in a suit with a messenger bag, and carrying a large, heavy looking, cardboard box.

“Hello, Yusuke,” he said, setting down the box beside the table along with his bag. “Sorry I’m late.”

Despite his guilt, Yusuke nodded. “I trust you have a reason.”

“Yeah, sorry. The meeting lasted longer than I thought it would, and it was hard to carry the box through the station. We can discuss it over coffee if you’d like?”

Yusuke closed his sketchbook and shoved it back into his backpack. “Of course.”

He hadn’t looked at the menu yet, so he was grateful when Nakanohara signalled to a waitress to bring one over. The two of them scanned the laminated pages, listing coffees and teas processed in ways that Yusuke only barely recognized from his conversations with Haru. Ultimately, he settled on the familiar: hot tea, specifically gyokuro. It had always been a favorite of his, and it was one that Madarame had often refused out of concern over the expense. Knowing what he did now, about Madarame’s secret penthouse in Okinawa, and the inherited estate in Aomori, the old excuse seemed all the more reason to order his favorite tea.

For a short while after the waitress had left to bring Yusuke his tea and Nakanohara his latte and pastries, the pair remained silent, Nakanohara’s gaze downcast towards the table. Yusuke stared at him, not knowing where to begin. While he referred to Nakanohara by his family name, and used the honorific “senpai” when speaking to him, Yusuke felt his mind drift back through the years, back to when Nakanohara and Kanai and the rest of Madarame’s students weren’t “senpai” but “ani,” when he thought of the atelier as a family. Nakanohara probably never felt that way, Yusuke realized. To Nakanohara, that family home was never more than a prison.

“I’ll start with the bad news: you won’t be paid back for three more years and it won’t be very much. Madarame was in some serious debt, so pretty much all of the money from print royalties of the Sayuri is going to that. The earnings from yours and the rest of the elder Kitagawa’s art sales were put into your trust, but as a minor, you can’t access it.”

The sudden flood of words jolted Yusuke out of his reverie. “What?”

“I was surprised too. I was certain you’d gotten yourself removed from his legal guardianship, but apparently, all finances are still his until you turn twenty,” Nakanohara said.

The waitress arrived at the table to deliver drinks and pastry, sparing Yusuke the difficulty of having to answer to his decision. It was true that he had never responded offers to discuss additional criminal suits or “juristic action” that he had received from the prosecutor in the labor violations, medical negligence, and embezzlement cases against Madarame. The prosecutor had left several voicemails on Yusuke’s phone, and, in the dreamlike chaos of that June, Yusuke hadn’t gotten around to returning any of his calls. In fact, now that he thought about it, Yusuke wasn’t even sure if he had listened to all the voicemails. Later, in the fall, when Sae had asked him if he were pressing child abuse charges, and when he had said no, she had given him an understanding smile and said that it was fine if he didn’t feel ready “yet, especially if you’ve already had him removed as your guardian.” It was the “yet” that had bothered Yusuke most at the time. Even though he knew she meant well, it felt as if she had meant all good crime victims would someday be glad to see the people who hurt them in prison, as if she would want to punish him too if she knew how badly he sometimes wanted Madarame back again. It was this feeling that led Yusuke to lie, just as easily and quietly as he always had when confronted by an authority, a simple nod and a “thank you.” Let her assume that he was as good of a victim as he wished he could be.

Yusuke thanked the waitress for the tea, and she bowed and turned away. He decided to answer Nakanohara’s implied question honestly. “After Sensei’s arrest, I was too preoccupied with, among other things, finding a place to live. I lost contact with the lawyers.”

“So you just decided to let the courts work their wonders and leave me to tell you the details?” Nakanohara took a sip of his coffee. “I don’t blame you. It was,” he stopped, staring down at the table. “Awful for me when I left too. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I slept in manga cafes for two months and begged high school kids for food out of vending machines. I wouldn’t have had the presence of mind for lawyers either.”

“It was different for you.” Yusuke stopped himself just before saying what would have been the next part of his reassurance: “Kanai had just died.” How long had it been since he had said that name out loud? Kanai Teru was, after Nakanohara, the other one of Madarame’s pupils whom he had known the best. He had lived with Madarame since before Yusuke turned five and wore glasses and had a beard and spoke with an overly loud voice and brought home dorayaki at four in the morning and slept on the first floor and specialized in still-lifes. And he had killed himself. Yusuke had been in his second year of middle school and Madarame had told him and there hadn’t even been a funeral for Yusuke and Nakanohara to attend, and Madarame never spoke about him again, and the door of his room was just left closed, as if there had never been any reason to open it.

Nakanohara shook his head. “Of course things were different. What I meant is that if it was hard for an adult, the strain on a kid would be even worse. Especially considering that you didn’t have any other living family.”

“I still don’t,” said Yusuke.

“I know,” Nakanohara apologized with that look Yusuke always hated to see when he mentioned his mother. “Actually I wanted to talk to you about that. About your mother I mean.”

Yusuke tensed. This was the other reason he had responded to Nakanohara’s email. Of course he had wanted to see his former senpai again, and of course he wanted to know the outcomes of the hearings but—

Nakanohara grunted, setting the box upon the table so heavily that Yusuke's tea splashed out of his cup and the remaining eclair shuddered on its tray. “I couldn’t take anything that had financial value, because all of that is part of your trust, but I was able to bring you these.”

Nakanohara gently pushed the box across the table as Yusuke rose up to look inside. Despite having never seen it before, Yusuke recognized the contents immediately.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

“It’s yours—unless you don’t want it of course. I can help you carry it back to your dorm if you want.” Nakanohara spoke hurriedly but Yusuke barely heard him. The wrinkled and dusty sketchbooks, loosely bundled together with rough string and frayed ribbon; photos and scraps of notepaper sticking out of them; a binder clip holding together one or two dozen pieces of mismatched 100-yen store stationary: this treasure drowned out everything else in Yusuke’s mind. It had all been hers. Inside of this worn cardboard box were fragments of a woman whom Yusuke had only known through her stolen self portrait. For so long, Yusuke could only wonder what sort of a person she had been, could only wish to know his mother. And now...

And now impure emotions began to creep in to taint his wonder at the gift. The first was anger. For the thirteen years since her death, Madarame had kept his mother’s sketchbooks, correspondence, photographs, and whatever other papers he had just received hidden. How many times had Yusuke just begun to ask a question, then told Madarame to “never mind,” knowing that queries about his mother would provoke a self deprecating ramble from his former master that would end with Yusuke apologizing for even thinking of a parent other than him? How many nights had Yusuke lain awake on his futon, wracking his memory for the face that Madarame claimed had never been photographed? What obvious lies. How dare he? How dare he have lied and manipulated Yusuke like that for thirteen years, when the answer to Yusuke’s torment was right there, probably in that very same building? Shaking, Yusuke rested his head in his hands.

Still, anger was better than the other poisons bubbling within him. All the sketchbooks were tied closed; all the envelopes were sealed, their contents still unknown. During the most painful of his days at the atelier, and even more now, now that he knew the truth of the Sayuri, Yusuke had felt an absolute and unshakable faith in his mother. Madarame was twisted and filthy and had treated Yusuke as a possession, but his mother’s love for him must have been pure, right? Even if Madarame or his teachers at Kousei Academy, or Kawanabe only meant to exploit and discard him, that someone had been able to love him without any dirty feelings meant that there must still be good and beauty in the world. But what if Yusuke was wrong?

And even if he wasn’t, did he even still deserve that kind of pure love? He hadn’t left—had even refused an opportunity to leave with an adult who supported him—when Nakanohara moved out after Kanai’s suicide. Yusuke had known of course, known what Madarame was. He had known that everything he did was on the behalf of a man whose only talent was to manipulate, abuse, steal, and abandon, and he had stayed on anyway. Worst of all, even now, even knowing that Madarame had let his mother die, Yusuke still sometimes thought of Madarame as a loving father. He still missed him. Perhaps if his mother had known what kind of son he’d grow up to be, the Sayuri would have been a very different painting.

But he still wanted it. His loneliness still demanded satisfaction, whatever form it might take. _How dirty_.

 

Yusuke sat back down, his vision swimming. “I can look later.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nakanohara.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Yusuke, forcing a smile. “I will be glad to look through this later. I merely think that this is something I will have to do alone.”

“Of course,” said Nakanohara. He looked down uncomfortably, and Yusuke realized that Nakanohara’s shoulder bag seemed somewhat overstuffed. Nakanohara followed Yusuke’s gaze.

“Is there something else that you want to show me?” Yusuke asked.

“Yes, actually, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s not the kind of thing I can really discuss with many other people, because we really were the only ones who knew…” Nakanohara trailed off. “But if you aren’t feeling up to looking at another dead person’s things, you don’t have to.”

“You mean Kanai-senpai?”

“Yes. Teru-kun’s parents and younger brothers took back most of his things, but they let me take some of his early drafts of paintings he did for Madarame. They really only wanted his own personal work and the letters they sent him, so…” Nakanohara stopped again. He didn’t need to say what they were both thinking, that Madarame had been stealing Kanai’s mail, that Madarame had probably done the same to the rest of them.

“So they can speak with him again,” said Yusuke. An empty platitude, he knew. Kanai’s family would never see him again, and it was all the fault of the same man who had stolen Yusuke’s family as well. Even though he had meant to put Nakanohara at ease, Yusuke knew that he had said the wrong thing as soon as the words left his mouth. “I’m sorry. I would like to see Kanai-senpai’s art, but perhaps another day would be best. Seeing my mother’s papers has left me somewhat… overwhelmed.”

Nakanohara nodded. “I understand. I do have one more thing for you, though.” He stood up and reached into the overstuffed messenger bag. A moment later, Nakanohara stood again and handed Yusuke a folded sheet of paper. Across the front, written neatly in dark blue ink, were the words “to the child of Miss Kitagawa Yurika.”

Yusuke dropped the note as if the paper had burned him. The hiragana, each familiar on its own, but together, it was something entirely new. Disgustingly new. It shouldn’t be this way. He shouldn’t have to learn her given name here, discussing legal documents in an overpriced cafe in Tokyo, more thirteen years after her death. Hurriedly, Yusuke picked the note up again from his tea plate. This wasn’t right, but he had to know more. The sight of the name--his mother’s name--had awakened something inside of him. The ravenous loneliness that Yusuke had in place of a family had finally tasted something savory.

“Thank you very much, but I have to leave. Thank you.” Yusuke pulled the entire 3,000 yen from his pocket and dropped it on the table, then stooped down to pick up the box.

“Wait, wait, I can help you!” Nakanohara knew better by now than to try to stop Yusuke when he was like this, but still, to send him out alone after this kind of shock? “Here, let me tie the lid back on. That way you won’t spill.” 

Yusuke took the box in his arms. It was heavy, of course. “Can you put the letter on top?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Nakanohara, tucking it under the string. “We can talk more later. I’ll call you. Stay warm out there.”

Another jingle of cafe door bells, and Yusuke was outside again in the bitter January slush. He barely felt it. The thrill of what he was holding in his hands was more than enough to keep him warm.

* * *

Yusuke made it halfway to the station before he had to put down the box to rest his arms. He set it on the clean top of a gacha game machine in an alcove in the wall of a white brick building, next to a computer repair store and beneath a massage parlor, and sat himself on the damp and cold ground beside it, breathing heavily. He really was weaker than he thought -- perhaps Ryuji and Ann were right about anemia.

It was here, in this pale, dirty, and lonely place, ignored by the passing crowds, that Yusuke decided to unfold the note and read it. There was nowhere good enough, nowhere pure enough for the Sayuri, but this wasn’t the Sayuri. This was a letter to a lonely and dirty person, from someone who had known not the Sayuri, but Kitagawa Yurika.

The letter was short, written on the spur of the moment, he guessed, in ballpoint pen on a piece of torn out notebook paper. How right. Yusuke began to read.

> _Dear Kitagawa Yusuke,_
> 
> _I’m very sorry not to have spoken with you earlier, but I only found out about you today, during the hearing._
> 
> _My name is Kanayama Keiko, and I used to study under Madarame-sensei, when my family name was Itakura, at the same time as Kitagawa Yurika. Those years were hard, but Yurika-san was a good friend. I was thrown out at the same time Madarame-sensei found out about her boyfriend, but no one told me that she had a child, or when she passed away. I have many happy memories of Yurika-san. She was very talented and dignified and honest to a fault. She was a little unusual, but I always thought she was wise. Even though she was younger than me, I thought of her as my senpai._
> 
> _Even though she is gone, I am glad that she lives on in you. If you would like to hear more about Yurika-san, please give me a call. I don’t think Madarame-sensei is the sort of man who likes to share happy stories about the dead, but I think it’s nice to hear good things about people even after they’ve passed away. I’m sure you also miss her very much. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope that we can meet soon._
> 
> _Kanayama Keiko_

Below the message was a phone number with an area code for Yokohama. Yusuke stared at the letter, then folded it up and tucked it carefully back into the string of the box. He didn’t know what to feel. For so long, he had wanted a tangible connection to his mother, to see her art and her photographs, to speak to someone who had loved her, to know something more of her than what little Madarame had let slip. Yet somehow, now that he had what he’d wanted, he still felt lonely. Lonelier than he’d felt in a long long time.

For a while, perhaps it was minutes, perhaps it was longer, Yusuke sat with his loneliness beside the vending machines, under an overhang, on a busy street in Tokyo in the January cold.

Then, he did something he’d never realized that he wanted to do back when he lived with Madarame. Something he’d never thought someone as dirty as him could do. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cellphone, and opened his address book. He held the phone to his ear and listened as it rang.

When he heard the person on the other end pick up, he didn’t even wait for her greeting. His words came out in a rush. “Haru-san. I need to talk to you. Can I come over to your house? Can you send someone to come get me? This is Fox, sorry for not saying that at the beginning.”

“Yes, of course! I mean, I’ll need to know where you’re calling from, and it won’t be right away. That’s alright with you, isn’t it?” She paused. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all,” said Yusuke. Of course things were wrong. Of course they were. But in that moment, knowing he had someone he trusted and who trusted him, someone he understood and who understood him? Things felt much more right than he’d ever known they could.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a song from the Carrie & Lowell album that I associate with Yusuke a lot. I'm sorry Sufjan....
> 
> I'm sorry this story comes so long after the first one. Real life has gotten in the way again, and I honestly forgot I'd already written it until I found it in my google docs. 
> 
> Yusuke is probably my favorite p5 character, so even if I don't get to write much more of this series, I'm glad I was at least able to publish this fic


End file.
